AquaSoft Stages 10, AquaSoft’s all-in-one solution to movie-making, contains everything that you would ever need when it comes to working with videos. By including a plethora of features that focus on the finest aspects of video-editing and special effects insertion, Stages 10 gives you complete control over your videos. Whether it’s cutting, cropping, or splicing videos, adding numerous professional-grade special effects, or exporting completed projects to various alternate file formats, Stages 10 lets you do all of those easily. Even when it’s time to shows off your work to others, Stages 10’s native mobile app lets you control your presentations remotely with no issues.

Super Intuitive User Interface

If you have used AquaSoft’s SlideShow Premium or Ultimate suites, you’ll feel right at home with Stages 10. The user interface separates available features under four separate panes in addition to the menu bar — Toolbox, Timeline, Properties, and Layout Designer. The Toolbox presents all included templates and special effects bundled into the application, and also gives you the option to select the media components that you want included in your video. On the other hand, the Timeline lets you actively manage all included components — video, audio, and subtitle tracks, special effects, text effects, etc. — where you can simply drag anything that you want from the Toolbox to the Timeline. In addition, Properties lets you adjust the various settings of any item that you select from the Timeline, while the Layout Designer lets you preview in real-time any changes that you make to your videos.

Editing Videos

Thanks to the inclusion of features such as the Timeline and Layout Designer, Stages 10 lets you perform a multitude of video editing tasks quickly and efficiently — whether it’s splitting up a video, merging two clips together, rotating video frames, or cropping them to alternate sizes, you can do all of those with minimum hassle. With the intuitive Timeline slider and separate key-frames available at your disposal, you can accurately determine where you want to cut, splice, or rotate your videos, and then preview your changes real-time in the Layout Manager. The Timeline isn’t just limited to performing simple edits — it also provides an unprecedented level of support when it comes to managing multiple media tracks, where you can insert video, audio, images, subtitles, and special effects instantly and perform various modifications for phenomenal results — adjusting durations, rearranging tracks, tweaking special effects, etc.

Inserting Special Effects

Stages 10 brings to the table numerous special effects that allow you to create terrific looking videos and slideshows — video, image, and text effects are intuitively bundled into the Toolbox, where insertion is as simple as dragging and dropping your preferred effect into the exact media track and location on the Timeline. Alphabending, Glow, Shadow, Arched, Gradient, Mirroring, Redscale, Old Photo, Black & White, Sepia, and Vignette are just a few of the image and video-based effects included within the application, while Delete Text, Blow in, Credits, Diagonal Flyby, Film, etc., are present when it comes to text-based effects. Inserted effects can be manipulated however you want, where you can either focus specific effects to run on single frames, multiple frames, or the entire video by simply adjusting the durations.

Output Formats

Whether it’s creating a slideshow or video with the use of single video tracks or multiple video, audio, image, and subtitle tracks, Stages 10’s got you covered when it comes to making them run on any device of your choosing. After completing your work, you can instruct the application to save the project on multiple formats of your choice, both sub-definition and high-definition (MP4, MKV, WMV, AVI, FLV, WebM, M2TS, etc.). If you are an Ultra-HD 4K enthusiast, Stages 10 doesn’t leave you in the cold, since it provides comprehensive support for all UHD formats. The application also gives you the option to save single frames or short durations from your slideshows or videos in image-based formats that include JPG, PNG, GIF, etc.

Presenting Your Work

While Stages 10 gives you all the tools that you require when it comes to creating phenomenal slideshows and videos, it doesn’t leave you without options when it’s time to present your work — although you can use the various media players and presentation applications to present your work, the presentation tools included in Stages 10 are unparalleled. While you can use the normal playback tools given to you when performing normal presentations on your laptop — for example at an office discussion table — the remote control features, however, are the main highlights. If you wondered about shelling more cash for a remote device, you are wrong, since all you have to do is to download the free Stages 10 mobile app onto your smartphone and you should be ready — even when presenting work at major expos.

Should I Buy It?

The amount of video-editing and slideshow-creation tools available at your disposal are quite unprecedented. Not only does Stages 10 provide phenomenal support when it comes to video-editing with it’s fantastic Timeline and Layout Designer features, but the amount of professional-grade special effects for videos, images, and text are simply astounding — simply put, you can turn even amateur-looking photos and videos and turn them into terrific-looking media content, while the support for multiple media-tracks should prove very useful for almost any instance. All of those, combined with a super-intuitive user interface that nearly anyone can use — complete with remote features ideal for any situation — and you have got an amazing video-editing application at hand.